Food and fuel supplies are running low in the besieged western Libyan
city of Misurata, where government shelling and rocket strikes on the
port have slowed humanitarian deliveries, a rebel official here said
Sunday. – Los Angeles
Times

Col. Moammar Gadhafi has turned to Libya's tribal leaders in a new
effort to erode a Western-backed insurgency, but the initiative,
including the promise of an amnesty, is having no immediate impact on
the stalemated conflict. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

A Libyan opposition leader said Friday that rebels plan to use money
pledged for humanitarian and reconstruction needs to buy weapons from
the Italian government, a claim an Italian official denied. – Washington
Post

Eman Obeidy, the Libyan woman who entered the international spotlight
after claiming Moammar Kadafi's militiamen gang raped her in March,
apparently fled to Tunisia this week. – Babylon and
Beyond

Libya's rebel government said May 7 that Italy has agreed to supply it
with weapons to fight against Moammar Gadhafi, but government sources in
Rome said only "self-defense material" would be sent. - AFP

Now, with the Syrian security forces escalating a brutal and bloody
effort to suppress an almost nationwide uprising, it may be too late for
Assad to salvage what little remains of his reputation as the thwarted
reformist waiting only for a chance to liberalize his country. – Washington
Post

The Syrian regime tightened its grip on protest hot spots around the
country Sunday, dispatching tanks into the town of Tafas in the south
and continuing to shoot and detain citizens in other locations, part of a
relentless crackdown aimed at suppressing a seven-week-old revolt. – Washington
Post

Syrian troops and tanks swept into the northern coastal town of Baniyas
on Saturday to suppress anti-government demonstrations, tightening the
squeeze on a persistent yet largely leaderless opposition movement that
has refused to stop staging protests despite a deadly military
crackdown. – Washington
Post

Syrians took to the streets in cities across the country in defiance of
the government's lethal bid to clamp down on antiregime protests, with
demonstrators appearing to gain support from tribal members and some
army troops. – Wall Street
Journal

Syria's leading activists are going deep into hiding following a
relentless and brutal crackdown by the regime, at a time when protest
leaders were expected to be emerging into public view, as they did at
this stage in Tunisia and Egypt. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

The White House on Friday called for a stronger international approach
for dealing with Syria, unless the violent government crackdowns see a
"significant change," White House press secreaty Jay Carney said in a
news release. – National
Journal

Syrian activists said a 12-year-old was killed Sunday during
anti-government protests in the western city of Homs. – Babylon and
Beyond

Josh Rogin reports: The difference between the situations in Syria and
Libya is that the Syrian government might still come around and pursue a
reform agenda, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. – The Cable

Bahrain’s king set on Sunday a fast-track timetable to end
martial-law-style rule in a bid to display confidence that authorities
have smothered an uprising for reforms even as rights groups denounced
the hard-line measures. – Washington
Post

Michael Bronner and John Farmer write: Matar took to heart the American
example of democracy and due process — and challenged the United States
to live up to its rhetoric in courageous exchanges with two secretaries
of state. Washington should do more to meet the challenge his case
represents, finding a bolder balance in pursuing our national interests
and affronts to human rights. – Washington
Post

The Obama administration has decided to provide about $1 billion in debt
relief for Egypt, a senior official said Saturday, in the boldest U.S.
effort yet to shore up a key Middle East ally as it attempts a
democratic transition. – Washington
Post

Egypt's new government has embarked on adventurous diplomacy to replace
the legacy of former President Hosni Mubarak with a bolder Middle East
presence less compliant with the U.S. and Israel. – Los Angeles
Times

Egypt's government has warned it will use an "iron hand" to ensure
national security after clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo
killed 10 people and injured scores – Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty

Officials at Cairo's airport said the son of a wanted Islamist and
nephew of the killer of President Anwar Sadat has returned to Egypt for
the first time in two decades. The officials said Saturday that Khaled
el-Islambouli came with his wife, two children and three siblings after
getting travel documents from the Egyptian Embassy in Turkey. – Associated
Press

Interview: Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas signed an agreement this
past week in Cairo that was seen as a first step toward unifying rival
governments in Gaza and the West Bank. U.S. and Israeli officials are
wary that the reconciliation, brokered by Egypt, could undermine any
peace efforts, since both countries consider Hamas a terrorist
organization. Prior to the ceremony, Washington Post senior associate
editor Lally Weymouth interviewed Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil
Elaraby on the accord and other changes since the fall of President
Hosni Mubarak. Excerpts follow. – Washington
Post

Paul Marshall writes: Judging the likely trajectory of post-Mubarak
Egypt requires assessing the depth of public support for Islamism, and
usually this has meant assessing the strength and intentions of the
Muslim Brotherhood. While the Brotherhood remains central, however, the
country is also facing a frequently violent upsurge of Salafist versions
of Islam. – The Weekly
Standard

The U.S. launched a drone strike in Yemen on Thursday aimed at killing
Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric suspected of
orchestrating terrorist attacks in the U.S, but he evaded the missile,
Yemeni and U.S. officials said. – Wall Street
Journal

Israel’s former intelligence chief has said that a strike on Iran’s
nuclear installations would be “a stupid idea,” adding that military
action might not achieve all of its goals and could lead to a long war. –
New York Times

Apparently bowing to unprecedented pressure from Iran’s clerical
establishment, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad welcomed an intelligence
minister he had ousted in April back into his cabinet meeting on Sunday.
– Washington
Post

The unprecedented power struggle between the two most powerful leaders
in Iran deepened Friday, spilling out into Tehran’s public prayers where
the mullah leading the service indirectly criticized President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad while the crowd chanted “Death to opponents of the supreme
leader!” – New York Times

An incarcerated top al-Qaeda operative here was able to wrestle a gun
away from an Iraqi prison guard Saturday on his way to a late-night
interrogation, free fellow inmates and lead a melee that left six Iraqi
counterterrorism officers and 11 inmates dead, police said. – Washington
Post

The chief suspect in the bombing last week of a popular tourist cafe in
Marrakesh, Morocco, had disguised himself as a guitar-carrying “hippie”
before he planted the two bombs, killing at least 17 people, an official
said Friday. - Reuters

In the vexed debate over whether Turkey is shifting its axis to the
east, a new study suggests that if it is, then that may be more about
old-fashioned nationalism than rising Islamism. – WSJ’s Emerging
Europe

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority beseeched a group
of visiting American Jews on Sunday to urge Congress not to cut off
hundreds of millions of dollars in aid as a result of his recent unity
agreement with Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. – New York Times

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said his movement will make decisions about
how to wage its struggle with Israel, including if and when to use
violence, in consensus with more moderate Palestinian factions. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

Josh Rogin reports: 29 U.S. senators have asked President Barack Obama
Friday to cut off aid to the Palestinian government if it joins with
Hamas, in a previously unreported letter obtained by The Cable. – The Cable

For more than 30 hours over the weekend, the Taliban immobilized the
southern city of Kandahar, unleashing multiple attacks with small arms
and suicide bombers near the city’s downtown, pinning down people in
their homes, forcing shops to close and halting most traffic. – New York Times

Osama bin Laden’s death in a U.S. commando raid could shock Taliban
militants, who once sheltered the al Qaeda leader, into peace talks with
the Afghan government, according to Afghanistan’s ambassador in
Washington. – Washington
Times

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his allies in Washington are hoping
that Osama bin Laden's demise will prod the Taliban into joining peace
negotiations. But the aftermath of the raid in Pakistan that killed the
Al Qaeda leader could just as easily embolden the Afghan insurgent group
in its long struggle against the West. – Los Angeles
Times

The killing of Osama bin Laden may weaken Al Qaeda’s influence on the
Afghan Taliban, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Sunday. –
Associated
Press

Analysis: From the Taliban’s hidden mud compounds to NATO’s headquarters
in Brussels and the Pentagon, combatants in a decade-long war are
asking versions of the same question: How does Osama bin Laden’s death
change the struggle over who will control Afghanistan? – New York Times

Editorial: In the end the coup of killing Osama bin Laden will not
relieve the United States of the hard, costly and painful mission it has
been pursuing in South Asia. That means building a stable Afghan
government that can defend itself and supporting the consolidation of
secular civilian rule in Pakistan. The administration must reap the
tactical benefits of the al-Qaeda leader’s death, push for whatever
diplomatic advantages can be gained — but not lose sight of the larger
objectives. – Washington
Post

Max Boot writes: If we give more time to Gen. David Petraeus and his
successor, Gen. John Allen, they can strengthen Afghanistan
enough—mainly by building up the indigenous security forces—to prevent a
Taliban takeover or a ruinous civil war even after U.S. forces finally
start drawing down. That, in turn, can help us to stabilize Pakistan: an
outcome worth fighting for. – Wall Street
Journal

Leslie Gelb writes: Afghanistan is no longer a war about vital American
security interests. It is about the failure of America's political
elites to face two plain facts: The al Qaeda terrorist threat is no
longer centered in that ancient battleground, and the battle against the
Taliban is mainly for Afghans themselves. – Wall Street
Journal

Pakistani media aired the name of a man they said is the Central
Intelligence Agency's station chief, prompting questions about whether
the Pakistani government tried to out a CIA operative in the wake of the
killing of Osama bin Laden. – Wall Street
Journal

President Obama’s national security adviser demanded Sunday that
Pakistan permit American investigators to interview Osama bin Laden’s
three widows, escalating tension in a relationship now fraught over how
Bin Laden could have been hiding in Pakistan for six years before he was
killed by Navy Seal commandos last week. – New York Times

Pakistani officials say the Obama administration has demanded the
identities of some of their top intelligence operatives as the United
States tries to determine whether any of them had contact with Osama bin
Laden or his agents in the years before the raid that led to his death
early Monday morning in Pakistan. – New York Times

Pakistan’s recently ousted foreign minister called Saturday for the
resignation of President Asif Ali Zardari and his prime minister, saying
that a U.S. commando raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden
represented a failure of government. – Washington
Post

Pakistan's spy agency is facing unprecedented public condemnation for
its failure to catch Osama bin Laden or anticipate the U.S. raid that
killed him, putting its influential and powerful chief, Lt. Gen. Shuja
Ahmad Pasha, under pressure to take responsibility for the lapses amid
calls for his resignation. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

It could be years, if ever, before the world learns whether Pakistan’s
powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) helped hide Osama
bin Laden. But detailed allegations of ISI involvement in terrorism
will soon be made public in a federal courtroom in Chicago, where
prosecutors late last month charged a suspected ISI major with helping
to plot the deaths of six Americans in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. – Washington
Post

Missiles believed to have been fired by an American drone killed at
least eight suspected militants and wounded four in Pakistan’s tribal
regions on Friday, according to a Pakistani security official and a
resident in the area of the strike. Later, seven more bodies were
recovered, bringing the death toll to 15, the resident said. – New York Times

The dilemma over the compound where U.S. Navy SEALs shot bin Laden dead
is whether to demolish it to prevent the site becoming a shrine to a man
widely admired in Pakistan, or to turn it into a tourist attraction
akin to Hitler's bunker. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

In a nation that is home to an alphabet soup of militant organizations
subscribing to the late al-Qaeda leader’s violent ideology, retaliatory
bombs did not explode. The cities did not fill with banned
organizations’ foot soldiers vowing revenge. A top religious party
drummed up a few hundred demonstrators Friday afternoon, but their
stated agenda — to protest the bin Laden killing — barely seemed to
register, and instead they fell back on familiar anti-government,
anti-American slogans. – Washington
Post

The White House has launched an aggressive effort to defuse widespread
American anger at Pakistan, with National Security Adviser Tom Donilon
warning Sunday against any break in American ties with the strategically
important country where Osama bin Laden was hiding for at least the
last six years. – National
Journal

When hiding out in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden was aided by a "support
network" the extent of which the U.S. is still trying to understand,
President Obama said Sunday. – The Hill

Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, denied Sunday that
any members of Pakistan's leadership knew terrorist leader Osama bin
Laden was living not far from the capital city of Islamabad. – The Hill

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Sunday that he still had his suspicions
about just how much the government of Pakistan knew about the
whereabouts of Osama bin Laden before the terrorist leader was killed by
U.S. troops. – The Hill

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the ranking member of the Foreign Relations
Committee, said Sunday that it 'a lot of people in Pakistan' had to
know where Osama bin Laden was, but that Pakistan is too important an
ally in battling terrorism to cut off U.S. aid. – The Hill

As Pakistan’s top Washington lobbyist, it’s Mark Siegel’s job to
convince U.S. officials not to take out their anger on the country
despite the fact that Osama bin Laden spent at least five years living
in relative comfort outside Islamabad. It’s not an easy sell. - Politico

Josh Rogin reports: U.S. officials had been frustrated by Pakistan's
refusal to cooperate in the mission to apprehend Osama bin Laden for
over 10 years, according to government documents released Thursday by
the National Security Archive. – The Cable

Steve Hayes and Tom Joscelyn write: Document exploitation teams are
analyzing the surprising amount of information taken from bin Laden’s
compound during the raid. Among their chief objectives: determining what
role, if any, top Pakistani government officials played in harboring
the fugitive Osama bin Laden over the last decade of his life. – The Weekly
Standard

Chinese and American officials are polishing off scripts for a ritual
that is set to unfold in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. During a
meeting known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, they will smile
across conference tables and talk about cooperating on a range of
issues: trade, currency, North Korea. – New York Times

U.S. officials will press China to allow the value of its currency, the
yuan, rise more quickly, amid signs that Beijing may be deciding to move
at a faster clip in part to fight inflation. – Wall Street
Journal

Oil companies usually focus on barrels, but Chinese petroleum giant
Sinopec is struggling to get a grip on bottles — or, to be more precise,
1,176 bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild and expensive Chinese
liquor. – Washington
Post

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident exposed flaws in the Japanese
government's measures to guard the country's reactors against
earthquakes and tsunamis. U.S. officials in recent years also have
worried that Japanese officials haven't taken enough precautions to
protect the facilities from terrorist attacks, according to diplomatic
documents released over the weekend on the WikiLeaks website. – Wall Street
Journal

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called Friday for a nuclear power
plant located near an earthquake fault-line southwest of Tokyo to
suspend its operations, reflecting a newly cautious stance on nuclear
energy and raising concerns about electricity shortages as the summer
approaches. – Wall Street
Journal

The operator of a controversial nuclear plant has refused to follow the
government's demand for an immediate shutdown, saying the company's
board needs more time to consider the matter. – Wall Street
Journal

Japan remains committed to nuclear power despite the crisis at the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Prime Minister Naoto Kan
indicated Sunday, as workers moved closer to repairing the crippled
plant by opening the doors of a damaged reactor building. – New York Times

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will replace five ministers in his
cabinet, including Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun in a response to
defeats for his ruling party in recent by-elections for parliamentary
seats, the presidential office said Friday. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

It’s noteworthy nevertheless that Taiwan, despite doing better than its
neighbors, has slid in the Freedom House rankings during each of Ma
Ying-jeou’s three-years as president, falling from 32nd in 2008 to its
current position at 48. Due to the relative infancy of media freedom in
Taiwan, the roots of which extend to the late 1980s, and the close
attention paid to the lack of those rights in China, many of the events
the report calls attention to have led to widespread concern around
Taiwan. – WSJ’s China
Real Time Report

Taiwan has deployed a new supersonic missile on its warships in the
latest response to China's rapid naval expansion, a lawmaker said May 8.
- AFP

A meeting of Southeast Asian leaders ended here on Sunday with two
significant issues unresolved, which led some analysts to question the
leaders’ ability to confront entrenched problems. – New York Times

Indonesia is hoping to raise its global profile by helping members of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which are meeting in Jakarta
this weekend, address some their biggest problems, said Indonesian
Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

Singapore's People's Action Party remained in power in Saturday's
general election, maintaining the political structure that has led the
city-state since independence despite the toughest fight the opposition
has ever mustered. – Wall Street
Journal

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Sunday that his People’s Action
Party would re-examine its style of government after it was returned to
power with its lowest percentage of the popular vote and its biggest
loss of parliamentary seats since Singapore’s independence in 1965. – New York Times

But lately the tandem has begun to hiccup and backfire. It is impossible
to say whether trust has broken down between the two men, one of whom
will increase his power in next spring’s presidential election. But a
universe of officials, businessmen and political hangers-on — uncertain
whether to show loyalty to one man, the other or both — has “spent the
whole last month on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” the economist
Vladislav L. Inozemtsev wrote last week in the newspaper Moskovsky
Komsomolets. – New York Times

The Russian authorities announced Sunday that eight insurgents were
killed in a large counterterrorism operation in the southern region of
Dagestan. – New York Times

Police in a Moscow suburb have arrested about 25 people taking part in a
demonstration against building a highway through an old-growth forest. –
Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty

U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Sunday shrugged off suggestions
that he step down as leader of the Liberal Democrats in the wake of his
party's humiliating losses in local elections and voters' rejection of
the party's plan to reform the U.K.'s electoral system. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

Philip Terzian writes: The significance of this week's vote, in the
short term, is that Labour, which had dominated Scottish politics since
the Thatcher era, has been devastated: Most of its leadership in
Scotland lost their seats, the total Labour vote was significantly
reduced, and Labour's new leader, Ed Miliband, has suffered a stinging
rebuke. Social Democratic voters seem to have transferred, en masse, to
the SNP while Scottish Conservatives, who have no seats in Whitehall,
did manage to stave off further losses. – The Weekly
Standard Blog

Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut has had his request to be
released on bail rejected by officials in the western Belarusian city of
Hrodna, RFE/RL's Belarus Service reports. – Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty

Ivory Coast president Alassane Ouattara took oath of office on Friday as
authorities of the Western African country try to turn the page on the
months-long civil conflict that followed a contested election. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

A new mass grave containing 29 bodies has been found in a restive suburb
of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, according to a resident
who said the victims were killed in the aftermath of a political
standoff that plunged the country into violence. – Associated
Press

President Barack Obama capped a week of somber and sometimes celebratory
events following the successful strike against Osama bin Laden with a
rally for U.S. troops, where he held up the al Qaeda leader's slaying as
evidence that his Afghanistan war strategy is working. – Wall Street
Journal

Jon Huntsman marked his return from China to the United States with a
sweeping address calling young Americans to serve their country — even
if it's by working for the president of a different political party. – Politico

Mr. Harper campaigned largely on his economic track record. Now with a
comfortable majority, he is expected to push for spending cuts aimed at
reducing Canada's swollen budget deficit; clarify rules on foreign
ownership of Canadian companies; and push through stronger economic and
security ties with the U.S. – Wall Street
Journal (subscription required)

People are marching over the high mountain into the capital behind a
sign that reads “Stop the War!” The war they are talking about is
tearing Mexico apart. At the front of the March for Peace is the
chain-smoking, left-leaning, well-to-do, mystical Catholic poet Javier
Sicilia, steering a movement of ordinary Mexicans who believe President
Felipe Calderon’s military-led, U.S.-backed war against organized crime
is failing – Washington
Post

Public dismay over Mexico's drug violence mixed with election-season
jockeying have put President Felipe Calderon on the defensive amid
finger-pointing over the carnage. – Los Angeles
Times

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is touting 2011 as the year of
tourism, and the Mexico Tourism Board is spending millions of dollars
plastering Southland billboards with images of the Great Pyramid of
Cholula and underwater trees. But the nation's deadly drug wars have led
the U.S. government to widen its travel warnings in the last few weeks,
throwing a wrench into Mexico's effort to attract foreign visitors. – Los Angeles
Times

Federal police have captured a suspected drug gang leader in a central
Mexican state where relentless violence prompted hundreds of citizens to
set off in a days-long protest march that arrived in the capital
Sunday. – Associated
Press

The U.S. government released five video clips of Osama bin Laden that
were seized by Navy SEALs during the raid on his compound, providing the
first photographic evidence of what officials described as the al Qaeda
leader's "active command-and-control center" in Pakistan. – Wall Street
Journal

U.S. intelligence analysts, poring over computer files and documents
seized from Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout, have started piecing
together al Qaeda's terror playbook, including new details about how the
network sought to exploit security loopholes to sneak militants into
the U.S. and Western countries. – Wall Street
Journal

Al Qaeda vowed to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden with retaliation
against the U.S. "soon," in a warning that the terrorist network posted
this week on militant websites. – Los Angeles
Times

A week after the death of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda still has not
publicly anointed a successor, and the most likely heir apparent could
prove to be a divisive figure within the terrorist network. – Washington
Post

Former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday that White
House staffers may be undermining intelligence efforts in the wake of
the killing of Osama bin Laden by talking too much about what the
American forces found in the terrorist leader’s Pakistan compound. – Washington
Times

When U.S. intelligence officials learned of this exchange, they knew
they had reached a key moment in their decade-long search for al-Qaeda’s
founder. The call led them to the unusual, high-walled compound in
Abbottabad, a city 35 miles north of Pakistan’s capital. – Washington
Post

The world’s most wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned
behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad,
Pakistan, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity. – New York Times

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that he would reinstate the
practice of waterboarding if he were president. – The Hill

Fred and Kimberly Kagan write: It may be that, in the end, America
simply cannot be secure if terrorist groups with international ambitions
have uncontested control over sanctuaries and resources. But the U.S.
government has never yet focused its attention fully on these
challenges, let alone focused resources on them. It is past time to do
so. Those sincerely concerned with America’s security should be
demanding that kind of commitment and should reject utterly the notion
that bin Laden’s death will allow us to declare “mission accomplished”
and withdraw from the Middle East, and the world. – The Weekly
Standard

Reuel Marc Gerecht writes: Although some American liberals and
conservatives would now like to declare the global war on Islamic
terrorism over, a little bit of patience is in order. We don’t get to
declare the war over. Only Muslims do. And among them, we still don’t
have the necessary quorum. For far too many, jihadism still has a
certain redemptive appeal. – The Weekly
Standard

The first of a new generation of missile warning satellites has lifted
off on it way to geosynchronous orbit. – Aviation Week

Russia and the United States must work hard to bridge major differences
over the divisive issue of a European anti-missile shield, Russian news
agencies quoted the nation’s top general as saying on Friday. - Reuters

President Obama faced sharply divided counsel and, to his mind, barely
better-than-even odds of success when he ordered the commando raid last
week that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the president said in
an interview broadcast Sunday. – Washington
Post

The heaping bipartisan praise suggests Panetta has reached “untouchable”
status — for the moment — in official Washington, a status generally
reserved for celebrities and war heroes. And his enhanced stature
couldn’t come at a better time for either him or the White House because
he has been tapped to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates, with the
transition expected to take place this summer. - Politico

Interview [with Paul Wolfowitz]: "When you have freedom sweeping the
Arab world, and you have people willing to risk their lives not as
suicide bombers to kill innocent people, but to save lives and to gain
freedom, the United States, first of all, should recognize generally
speaking which side of that issue we're on…There are all kinds of ways
it can end badly, but that would seem to me to be even more reason to be
deeply engaged—to find people who want it to end the right way and to
support those people, rather than holding back." – Wall Street
Journal

FPI Director William Kristol writes: Will the president draw the
conclusion that the cause of justice and our national interest—and, one
might add, his own political interests—is well served when he leaves
behind his progressive prejudices, and embraces unapologetic and
energetic American leadership? Or will he decide that this was just a
one-off event, and return to progressively leading from behind, both at
home and abroad? We hope for the former, and fear the likelihood of the
latter. – The Weekly
Standard

Lawmakers overseeing defense spending are moving to block or modify deep
cuts proposed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, setting up a key
vote this week that could help determine the success of the
administration’s attempt to shrink the Pentagon’s budget. – Washington
Post

The CIA's stunning success, after its disastrous judgments before the
2003 invasion of Iraq and other high-profile failures, follows drastic
increases in funding, staff, new high-tech systems and tools, and the
reorganization of the entire U.S. intelligence community since 9/11. – Los Angeles
Times

A company of U.S. Marines recently conducted a remarkable three-week
patrol through southern Afghanistan, replacing hundreds of pounds of
spare batteries in their packs with roll-up solar panels the size of
placemats to power their battle gear. – Wall Street
Journal

The U.S. Air Force, which on May 3 grounded its F-22 Raptors, has now
identified which other aircraft might be affected by defective oxygen
generators. – Defense News

U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin engineers have created a new type of tool
that will allow maintenance crews to perform critical repairs on the
U.S. Marines' F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) without
removing the aircraft's jet engine. – Defense News

Northrop Grumman is planning to publicly unveil its secret Firebird
aircraft later this month at the Pentagon’s Empire Challenge, an
exercise designed to demonstrate intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance technologies that can be fielded quickly. – Associated
Press

Despite growing controversy about the cost and relevance of aircraft
carriers, navies around the world are adding new ones to their
inventories at a pace unseen since World War II. – Associated
Press

Tom Donnelly writes: The big difference between 1980 and 2011 is that
President Obama is blessed with an infinitely more capable set of
military tools. Today’s force stands at the end of a 30-year trail of
investment in recruiting, retaining, and training the best people and
providing them with world-class equipment…The irony, of course, is that
Barack Obama—the commander in chief who owes his newfound martial
reputation to a military built and maintained by his predecessors of
both parties—is leading the charge to cut defense spending. – The Weekly
Standard

Mackenzie Eaglen writes: Fiscal responsibility and national security are
not mutually exclusive. No budget should escape scrutiny in these tough
economic times. But in calling for the Pentagon to kick in an
additional $400 billion through spending cuts, President Barack Obama
has put the budgetary cart before the horse. - Politico

Michael Bronner and John Farmer write: Matar took to heart the American
example of democracy and due process — and challenged the United States
to live up to its rhetoric in courageous exchanges with two secretaries
of state. Washington should do more to meet the challenge his case
represents, finding a bolder balance in pursuing our national interests
and affronts to human rights. – Washington
Post

Max Boot writes: If we give more time to Gen. David Petraeus and his
successor, Gen. John Allen, they can strengthen Afghanistan
enough—mainly by building up the indigenous security forces—to prevent a
Taliban takeover or a ruinous civil war even after U.S. forces finally
start drawing down. That, in turn, can help us to stabilize Pakistan: an
outcome worth fighting for. – Wall Street
Journal

Fred and Kimberly Kagan write: It may be that, in the end, America
simply cannot be secure if terrorist groups with international ambitions
have uncontested control over sanctuaries and resources. But the U.S.
government has never yet focused its attention fully on these
challenges, let alone focused resources on them. It is past time to do
so. Those sincerely concerned with America’s security should be
demanding that kind of commitment and should reject utterly the notion
that bin Laden’s death will allow us to declare “mission accomplished”
and withdraw from the Middle East, and the world. – The Weekly
Standard

Reuel Marc Gerecht writes: Although some American liberals and
conservatives would now like to declare the global war on Islamic
terrorism over, a little bit of patience is in order. We don’t get to
declare the war over. Only Muslims do. And among them, we still don’t
have the necessary quorum. For far too many, jihadism still has a
certain redemptive appeal. – The Weekly
Standard

Mission Statement

The Foreign Policy Initiative seeks to promote an active U.S. foreign policy committed to robust support for democratic allies, human rights, a strong American military equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and strengthening America’s global economic competitiveness.Read More